Linux. Worth the money?

[Hivetyrant]

I got the latest APC mag and have been studying all the "Best" distro's there are, and I have also studied the "amstering Linux guides and learnt quite a few things about Linux, now I just got to get a decent copy, I have a basic version of Mandrake, but I want something more, thats why if im going to use it, I want a good copy with everything.
If I get Mandrake, I will get the powerpack, and that seems like the way to go at the momment, though I'm looking for a multimedia sort of set up, you know, play movies, music and also do alot of graphical editing.
So, what would you guys suggest? (hopefully from personal experiance)
Money is not a major issue, and I dont want any of the download copies (Crap connection and they dont come with everything I need)

[shamrock_uk]

How much are you paying?

If you have a crap connection I would say that would reduce the usability of Linux - my life is made a hell of a lot better by URPMI which provides you with all the software you'll ever need and makes dependency problems a thing of the past. Be aware that Mandrake won't include licensed stuff, like divx codecs for example so a little downloading might be essential at the start.

But Mandrake 10.1 is the distro for me: the only one to successfully detect my forward and back mouse buttons. The installation is an absolute breeze too - M$ should take note of how it should be done.

[Felix The Assassin]

I tried the free distros, Knoppix, Mandrake Linux free version, and Dubian.

If you like GUI style, then Mandrake is it. I understand with a good connection, and a few days of pure dedication, one could have Dubian really customized, and sleek.

This machine is dual, WinXP-Pro w/SP2, and Mandrakelinux. Each are very similar, but each so very different. My understanding is one should ride the fence with a learner distro, and then fully commit to one or the other. I have both, but as the saying goes, Win is way easier, and I've gotten lazy lately.

The current Mandrakelinux PowerPack @ 49Euro, is a strong contender in the multimedia realm. If you do go, join the MandrakeClub as well, it provides a weekly, and as needed newsletter. Along with some good ads, and savings notice.

[philip]

Felix, debian won't be really fast cause all packages are compiled for i386 (windows PCs are i686 now and since some time). You can get it all customised if you know a bit about linux though and then it's definitely faster than mandrake simply cause you only have installed what you need. In this regard I think slackware and gentoo are a lot faster since the packages are made for i686 (I have slackware too but I don't have time to configure it all atm so I don't use it much)

The few days of dedication are right if you start out as a complete newbie on the stable version. I hear the newer are a bit easier (configure more if you're newbie) and the software isn't too old. Now I can setup my debian machine in like 1.5 hour. About 1 for the minimal install and the software I want (still minimal [img]smile.gif[/img] ) and another for recompiling the kernel.

From my own experience I don't have much to say about mandrake. I started with debian. It had some things I had to configure but that was because I used woody (stable over 3 years old now), sarge is supposed to setup a lot more automatically. Then I installed mandrake and hated it because it's bloated so I removed and threw the disks away after 3 minutes in it.

Any distro can do what you want. It's just about how many time you want to put in. Like want to learn a bit and have it customized or go with all the preset options and preinstalled software. As in you just want to use it. But just as in windows if something doesn't work you have to know a bit of the system. You have that knowledge in windows now but there's only one way to get it in linux.

Also which programs do you want to use for graphical editing. Cause there's no photoshop for linux, and getting it to work might be quite hard. The gimp doesn't have some of the lesser used functions.

Remember you'll have to upgrade packages sometime or another and packages aren't very small at times. Mandrake uses a lot of large (bloated as well IMO ) programs like KDE.

If you think it's worth your money then buy it. Is it worth your money? Depends. If you just want to use it and have minimal configuration yourself I guess it's quite good. But it might still be something doesn't work exactly like you want it or not at all. And that's when you shouldn't complain you have to get your hands dirty and fix it Chance is quite big that you might like something different. If you don't think that describes you you could go for another distro as well and maybe donate to it or to a program you like a lot.

You see there are a lot of options and that's the fun of free software (free as in freedom)

Also never expect you don't have to learn anything to use it.

Have fun!

[shamrock_uk]

Photoshop will run under Wine, with a couple of annoyances - toolbars will stay maximised even when the rest is minimised for example. And the Alt key doesn't work for my friend.

If money isn't a problem, then you'll have a painless time running it under CrossOver Office

Edit to remove evil smiley icon - teething problems with keyboard browsing

[ 03-27-2005, 01:47 PM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]

[philip]

Crossover Office sounds like it will be easiest then. Wine often is really hard for new people.

[shamrock_uk]

It's probably worth the (reasonable) fee as you'll also get a lot of your games to work under it - the latest version does iTunes I believe too. They anticipate having 90% of Windows programmes running by the end of year - certainly ambitious.
You can download a free trial here to see if it's for you.

[philip]

Isn't Cedega for the games. Cause the supported site for Crossover only lists other applications as supported?

[shamrock_uk]

Hmm...following the link I posted above, the only products listed are the office ones, yet under 'compatability' there is still a large list of games.

[LennonCook]

Money? Linux? Go look at Ubuntu - you can even get pressed CDs, for free.
That isn't to say the distro is any good, though... but in terms of the horrid GUI-centric distros (that try to hide the command line from you), it is the best by far. Mandrake, and anything else Redhat based, tend to be quite horrid in terms of usability, in my experience. For example, RPM cannot download any packages for you - you have to go hunting down the RPMs you want, and all of their dependancies. Debian's apt-get (and Ubuntu's horrid "synaptic" frontend to it) and Gentoo's emerge do that for you, and do it quite well. Also, Redhat distros tend to present you with a hundred different packages at install time, and expect you to choose what you want then. Get Ubuntu (or Kubuntu or Knoppix), and you'll have one of everything - albeit old versions, which are rampant in distros that come with packages pre-installed.

As you can tell, I would recoomend a minimal distro that doesn't hide the command line option from you - you'll find that basically every GUI control panel will forget some options that you need, and suddenly when something goes wrong, you'll need advanced command line knowledge when you haven't even been exposed to simple CL tasks.
Although, this could just be my bias, since I find that both major Desktop Environments (KDE and GNOME) suck greatly, are bloated, and try to copy other OS's instead of being Linux (KDE copies Windows; GNOME copies MacOS; both do it poorly).
EDIT: The reason I mention Ubuntu and kin mainly is because the only good command-line distros I know of include downloading the packages you want after install. This is a good idea (since it saves total downloading in comparison to getting a package-complete distro), but some packages - X, for example, and most GUI centric things - can be (read: are usually) huge.
Movie playback, I can't remember if Ubuntu comes with MPlayer or XMMS... but it should have something. And in general, if it can do movies it can do music. MPlayer can use any codec you feed it, including proprietry ones... but always look for open ones first - they tend to play better with Linux, excuse the pun.
Graphic editing, Ubuntu definately has the GIMP, which is the best image editing software you're likely to come across anywhere, ever. Just as long as you don't think that to be 'usable', it's interface has to be exactly the same as Photoshop's or Fireworks'.

Ofcourse, other than Ubuntu, there is also Linspire, which is meant to be alright for people moving to Linux from Windows. It is reported to copy Windows in every way possible, including the security issues. Thank god it isn't our fore-runner against Windows...

[ 03-27-2005, 08:52 PM: Message edited by: LennonCook ]